 Welcome and thank you for joining the New America Fellows program for this webinar discussion of Ruben John of the Millers halfway home. I'm a we so you director of the fellows program. For more than 20 years, New America has supported hundreds of fellows who've gone on to publish books, produce documentary films as well as other deeply reported projects. It's always a pleasure to be able to host our fellows at New America for their launch events. Ruben congratulations again on the publication of halfway home. We're delighted to be able to host you for this conversation today. Before we start a few housekeeping notes. If you have questions during the event, please submit them to the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen and we'll pass them to the moderator. We encourage you to sign up for a newsletter and events list so that you can learn more about our work, as well as receive invitations to future fellows program events like this, and you can find information on our website. And more importantly, copies of halfway home are available for purchase through our book selling partner solid state books. You can find a link to buy the book on our events page and you can also see a link on the little icon under the book as well. Before I turn the conversation over to Clint, let me introduce you to our speakers today. Johnathan Miller, a class of 2019 fellow with us at New America as a sociologist criminologist and a social worker who teaches at the University of Chicago and the School of Social Service Administration, where he studies and writes about race, democracy and the social life of the city. He was a member at the Institute of advanced studies located in Princeton, New Jersey. He was also fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and Dartmouth College. Clint Smith, a class of 2020 fellow with us at New America as a staff writer at the Atlantic. He currently teaches writing and literature at the DC Central detention facility. His debut nonfiction book, how the word is past, which explores how different historical sites reckon with or failed to reckon with the historical relationship to the history of slavery will be published in June of 2021. He received his BA in English from Davidson College and his PhD in education from Harvard University. We plan to host a book launch event for Clint and June's to do be on the lookout for that invitation in a few months. Thank you again for joining us today. And with that, I'll turn the conversation over to you Clint. Thank you so much we still it is a pleasure and honor. I'm going to do this thing. Sometimes when people like the virtual event space. I mean, I guess we're all used to it to some degree now. The thing like, oh, I'm going to listen and then I'm going to buy the book and like maybe a no, like right now, for the conversation starts need to go by the book, click on the link click on the button by one for yourself by one for your partner for your kids for your dog by seven copies. I spent the last week or so reading this book. And it is, it is not an exaggeration to say that this book should be in the contemporary canon of work on incarceration. I mean, it is, it is one of the most important books on this topic that I've read. And I've read a lot of these books. Probably too many. I also should apologize because I'm, you will probably hear my children in the background. And so when I'm not talking, I'll meet myself. But I have a three year old and a two year old who are, you know, we're all in the same house together we've been the same house together for a long time so you might hear them bang on the door and whatnot. But this book is amazing. It really, really is really not I met right before the pandemic started me, I think maybe like a year and some change ago at a dear friend's house and he was telling me about the project and and I was like, Oh, this is really interesting. This is, and obviously it had been the result of more than a decade of work. And, and I, and I think that I didn't fully appreciate what the book would be until I sat down with it. Until I sat down with with Ruben and understood his story and I don't want to play and tell me talk about that and I want Ruben to start with a reading but I do want to begin by by saying upfront that it's an extraordinary book and it's an extraordinary achievement and belongs up there with with the classics in the genre so Ruben, please go ahead and give us a short reading and then we'll have in the discussion. Thank you so much. I have to say it's just a real honor to be in this conversation with you. Thank you for making time to do this. And thank you also to Weesta and Angela and Sarah and Marie and the wonderful 2019 New America cohort for just always being so supportive in the new America organization, especially to the folks who have organized this so I want to start with a reading from chapter four. The book is is broadly about the way that mass incarceration is transformed the social life of the city, and it's filtered into our most intimate relationships. Hello. This is a collect call from some voice that sounded like my brothers, a prisoner at the Michigan Department of Corrections. You feel you being victimized or extorted by this prisoner, call customer service at some number ratted off too quickly for me to catch. The digital woman gave more instructions to accept this call press zero to refuse it press one to prevent calls from this facility press six. Why was Jeremiah calling collect. I added money to his account, or at least that's what I thought. Shit, I hissed out loud but not quite loud enough for my young son Jonathan to hear. I was in prison move books to find my wallet under the coffee mode. In Michigan, and in many states to people in prison make calls using prepaid accounts calls costs 21 cents per minute plus a $2.95 processing fee. I spent $80 a month on my brother's calls. Why was he calling collect. Did you forget his passcode. Had I paid J pay again instead of connect network, which also handled quote inmate trust funds for your loved one to buy soap and ramen noodles. We still use J pay to send emails. They were cheaper. They were the cheapest option for 20 cents a page and 20 cents an image you could send a five page letter. Add a dollar for a holiday e greeting card and email could cost $3 return stamps cost 25 cents. I was in the states and asked about my family. At the end, he would make requests. He asked me to look up job training programs and send screenshots from his Facebook page. He asked for books and magazine subscriptions. He'd always need money for something Jim shoes a television set and AM FM radio, each item costing twice as much as it did in the free world. And Jeremiah $250 for his first Christmas inside to buy boots and a television set. We didn't know the MDLC takes half everything over $50 in the 30 day period to cover legal debts and Jeremiah old thousands like every other person convicted in this country. $600 for the checked out public defender who met with him once for 20 minutes on the day of his plea deal. $1611 for court costs $400 for an extradition fee $68 for the state minimum cost to record his felony record. The cash that remains from his Christmas gift left enough to buy boots or TV, but not both. I was breathing hard now my chest tightening. I couldn't remember if you pressed hashtag after your debit card number or wait to enter your security code. Shit, I thought the digital lady was making me start over again. What must it have been like for Jeremiah standing on the other end of that call. Was there silence. Did you hear me entering the digits after spending too long in my head the call connected. What's up Rover scuba. What you doing Jeremiah asked. We caught up quickly, like we always did. He told me a funny story about the men he lived with and asked about my wife and kids. Let me ask you this though, he said, just like he always did before making a request. I need to hear his voice, but I was always in the middle of something. That time I was writing the proposal for this book. The previous time I was in a faculty meeting. The time before that I was on a date. No matter if I was sleeping or playing with my kids are trying to clear my mind when the car came I had to answer any boxer will tell you that the punch you don't see coming is the one that puts you down. That's all you didn't expect. The court date you didn't have the gas money to attend the conversations with your children about why their uncle was in prison, and when he was coming home, the honest answer, you're not sure. The unexpected embarrassment as you sit at your desk entering an order for 30 packages of ramen noodles. What it feels like when Michigan packages runs out of the flavor of ramen noodles he wants. It's these little things, the daily disruptions that managed to put you down. Billion families live this way, sending money they can't afford making court dates they don't have time for driving five hours only to be turned away because the facilities are locked down because someone's dress isn't quite long enough. It's the way the guard talks to you and how you heard it single file through dingy corridors to pay too much for microwave concessions. You're just watching your loved ones demolish that food and how they marched away when the visit ends. It's feeling alone, though everyone you know has experienced this. One in two Americans have lived some version of this story, because half of all us residents in a full two thirds of all black people in this country have a loved one who has done time. But it's not just the family members who are frustrated. It's especially hard for the person in prison. The combination of bad cell phone reception and a busy life means your incarcerated loved one can't reach you. After four attempts he wonders if your distance is intentional. When you finally accept the charge your tone reeks of aggravations he couldn't have caused. He's gone weeks without mail and months without a visit. He's hearing another lecture from his younger sibling about what he should be doing with his life. He's trying to raise his children through collect calls 15 minutes at a time. He's having to stand there at that pay phone while his loved one complains about problems he can't fully understand. He knows what he's put you through, but he calls you because he needs you. The prison exacerbates these needs and it escalates these tensions changing the nature of even the most intimate relationships, but it's not just like this on the inside. It is like a ghost haunting formerly incarcerated people as they look for work in places to stay as they sit at the dinner with the people they love upon release. Formerly incarcerated people are greeted by over 45,000 laws policies and administrative sanctions that dictate where they may go with whom they may live and how they might spend their time. These collateral consequences prevent people with criminal records from fully participating in the labor of the housing market. The landlords and employers can reject the applications without an explanation. The civic and personal lives are also constrained. They may not hold public offices. They may not sit on juries. They may not adopt the child. They may not live in the home with a foster child. And if all politics are local, the politics of mass incarceration are hyper local just pick a state. New York has over 1000 entries in its legal code, locking formerly incarcerated people out of the economy. In 1859, Illinois outpaces them both over 1200, including 500 employment restrictions, 184 civic restrictions, 20 regulating housing and 48 that dictate family life. There are so few places where formerly incarcerated people can turn to in their time of need. This was due to changes in liability law which began in the 1980s, tenants to negligent landlords when they were robbed or mugged in their buildings, and the court sided with the tenants for the first time in US history, finding that crime prevention was a part of every landlord's responsibility. Landlords were fond of the nuisance ordinances for letting their buildings fall into disrepair for harboring drug users and gang activity for leasing apartments to people with criminal records for creating quote, criminogenic environments. This Congress passed the Housing Opportunity Extension Act requiring public housing agencies across the country to a big tenants for any criminal activity, including crimes committed on or off such premises by quote, any member of the tenants household, any guest, any other person under the quote, tenants control. Almost overnight, private citizens were conscripted into the nation's crime fighting machinery. This was a relation of force, offering help to someone with a criminal record could now cost you your livelihood. Mothers were being evicted for the crime of letting their children, who had been to prison, sleep on the couch. Cousins, lovers and friends who let people with records visit their home. They were evicted to. I knew that this was the world that my brother would reenter where the laws that prevent him from getting a job or renting an apartment also made it risky for people to offer him help. And I knew that the support he needed in prison with pale in comparison to what he would need when he returned. My brother, like every one of the 19.6 million people who have a felony record would have to navigate what I call an economy of favors. He would be tasked with soliciting support from people who are encouraged not to help him. In fact, people who are punished if they do. One minute remaining. The voice said, I jot it down Jeremiah's request. I love you bro, my brother said, I appreciate all you do. I love you too man I replied before the digital woman disconnected the line. Man, I joined with like a palm of the book and the framing of it with the phone call that was incredibly powerful to you do you done. Did you read the audio book or did somebody else. Yeah, I didn't care about it. Got it. Well, you would have done, you would have done a great job. I tried I wanted to try, but it took me nine takes to get five minutes right. Oh man so you were going to at first and then you were like, I got you, I got you. Well, thank you for that powerful reading. I mean, that section captures so much of what this this book is about and I want to kind of started a sort of meta level and then we'll become a little more granular and in the first page as you write that of the 2.3 million people who are incarcerated 40% of black, 84% are poor, and half have no income at all. So I think that that framing was so important, because sometimes we can find ourselves in a range of contexts, talking about this like, is it race, is it class like. But part of what you do so well throughout the book is is talk about and embody and make clear the interaction between those two things. So if you have interacted in your own life and interacted in the lives of folks you spent time with. Could you talk about the, the specificity of why you wanted to frame things both at the intersection of poverty and and race and like why that framing was was so important for you as a sociologist and someone thinking about this work. That's a question very much. You know it's interesting. One of the tricks of American racism is the conflation of race with criminality of course, but the inflation of all social problems with racialized groups and people are so that when you say welfare queen, you know you think black women so much so when you formally incarcerated person or prisoner or inmate or something like that, you think black people, and it's absolutely true that black folks are five times more likely to be incarcerated twice as likely to be arrested do more time when arrested for the same offenses, you know 10% on average in the in the state system 20% average in the federal. I'm sorry, I had that reverse 20% on average in the state I think it's 20% state and 10% federal but one of these other, but they do that they're likely to do more crime and this doesn't relate to whether you know to to to to like differences. What I'm trying to say is that we know that black folks get the worst end of the state is this this is where it is, but mass incarceration doesn't stop at the threshold of the black family, neither do any of these social problems that that that that goes through our laws and policies that initially target black people, you know, and so and so you know if we think about the American prison system, you know 40% of that prison is black, white people are underrepresented, for sure, but close to 40% of that prison is white, which means there's something like a million white prisoners. These are poor people. So, so, so, so, so, so what does it mean to have a million white men close to a million white men behind bars. You know, we never asked the question that way. Right. If we, you know, Marie gosh talk says, if you release every black person from an American jail of prison today you still have one of the world's largest prisons what does it mean to live in a in a society in which we do this not people who we see as the other, but to ourselves whoever the hour is, you know, in this case. And so, and so what what I want to do is spotlight the cruelty of it. And this isn't a story that that's that's like race blind or something silly like that absolutely not again five times but you can't do that to me and not think it affects you. You know, you can't do that to my children, and I think that your children will be will be will be locked up to And part of what you made clear in the section that you read. And there's another section in that you talk about a little more extensively and the pros is so beautiful and so, so compelling. But it's, it's kind of talking about number read just a section of it, talking about the risk that are posed not only to the people who are incarcerated themselves, but to their family. And I just want to read this part where it says, it whispers into the ear of prospective employers and landlords, urging them to reject applications. And it whispers into the ears of grandmothers and girlfriends as they make life or death decisions on behalf of their loved ones, forcing them to withhold a couch to sleep on or risk eviction to help them because the state has labeled the people they care for the care that they care for most criminals. And then you got to go on to talk about the tension that exists there for you and your own brother. And, and I thought that that was so we'll talk a little bit about more about how you frame the sort of sociological nature of the text with your own sort of memoiristic recollections but but I think the at that part is often under under discussed and under appreciated in the way that it's that incarceration is not only impacting those millions of people you know the 2.3 or so million people who are in jail and prison now the 11 million people who cycle in out of jail every year, but to their loved ones and the decisions that one is put in the position of having to make like do I for even for you, you're like, I care about this person, and I really want to ensure he is doing that I can do the best of my ability, but I also can't put my family at risk. I also can't make they have, you know, my wife and child put out of this house like I also. And these are the constant tensions that people are thinking about in part because of the sort of legal infrastructure that exists that very as you articulated very specifically disincentivizes and not even disincentivize and disincentivizes makes illegal the act of attempting to bring a loved one back into your life and care for them in the way that you know how because it might result in in harmful impacts for the people who are already there. Can you talk about how you were feeling navigating that tension and what you see more broad. In many ways and it was, it was, it's a very hard circumstance to live through to to to, you know, the framework that you laid out was was was perfect and perfectly captures what I'm trying to do in the book which is to show that these changes in policy have made it so that to help someone with a criminal record is to put you is to put yourself at risk and to risk your livelihood. So, you know, the changes interpretation of liability law in housing made it so that the grammar will be evicted. And so if she let the grandson sleep on the couch and we saw that over and over again, she get threatened with eviction she'd be evicted itself. So now what does that mean when she does let the grandson sleep on the couch because grandma gonna be grandma. And I'm gonna be me right like this is my brother so he can't, he can't officially live with me but he can definitely crash if nobody's looking right so. But then, but then okay so let's say he's crashing, while nobody's looking for those couple days at a time, and then go because it can't stay forever. In fact, let me let me hop back in the grandma situation I'm gonna let my grandson sleep on the couch. It happens when the grandson gets in an argument with the grandma. There's this there's this strange tension that gets introduced that relationship that wasn't there before because the power in that the power has shifted in such a way. That is that is unnatural to the relationship and you know I'm a sociologist and, and you know I think I'm social scientists, you know, broadly defined and so I think I don't I don't typically think much about the nature the quote nature of things and that that's why I think I think social relations is kind of where the where the where the action is the relation that was in place before was a relation of love a relation of care a relation of the grandmother extending herself, you know, dinners and and barbecues and time together if you know these sorts of things. The criminal record makes it so if I engage in those things that I'm inclined to do because that's what we always done I can be put out. I will do this thing that I'm inclined to do because I'm inclined to do it. I want to help you I love you. Now, you didn't clean your room. Now, taking this risk, you're not listening to me. Right. The kinds of tensions that this happens in everyday relations in one part of the book. I'm going to comment who I call Jimmy, who stays in a relationship with someone he doesn't want to stay in a relationship. I think in part because he has nowhere else to go, because he's locked out of the political economy. He's locked out of the civic life of the city he's locked out of the institutions, the life giving institutions of a free society. He tells me in the beginning of the chapter that he wants him a hot girl. I want me a hot girl, he says, you know, this is this girl is this is this is, you know, she's she's 15 years older than him. And in prison for eight years he wants to feel like he's free and he doesn't feel free in this relationship. Months later, you know, I catch back up with him and he's talking about marriage. Why are you talking about marriage Jimmy. Well, Jimmy Jimmy now has a place to stay yes someone that to depend on and there's some other circumstances that people can read about but it changes it transforms the nature of these relationships that exacerbates tensions that may have already been there and it works. It works. Relations of care and when I don't think that we well covered in the literature. Absolutely. And I think the tension there is is compounded by what we know, you know, in the in the literature in the social science about how one's relationship with loved ones and community, when they come out is what largely dictates whether or not you will find your like that is the thing that sort of found the impacts recidivism is whether or not you got like you have been able to stay in touch with have relationships with and have a place to go like you have that couch to crash on do you still have a relationship with your grandmother do you still have a relationship with your girlfriend you still have a relationship with the mother father of your child with your parents you know and and so it and then I think this is such a good point because even because we tend to think about that we're like all right well if we can keep people in touch with grandma if we can keep people in touch with these folks then then that's the work right but then even if you get to grandma's house you're saying that that's only half the job because once you get there that this thing is hanging over folks in a way that is fun that fun is fundamentally different than I mean no matter what the sort of ethos of care is in that house the nature of the risk and the power and balance as you said so well distorts. The loving caring relationship that was already there and I think that that the relationship between the structural and the interpersonal in that is so important and I and I want to think about that in the context of the what we tried to do on the on the front end. Not the front front end because then we would build a social infrastructure that would prevent people from going into prison in the first place but once they get in prison. And I'm thinking about this a lot because there's you know Joe Biden has come in and one of the first things he did on incarceration was not write an executive order that he wasn't going to renew the federal contracts of these private prisons, which, which is a good thing. And I think that, you know, we have a more sophisticated understanding of the carceral infrastructure in 2021 than I think we did in 2010 collectively as a country. But I think a lot of people still fail to understand the relatively small percentage of prisons that are private and even notions of like what constitutes as private and and public like not private like a not privatized prison. And what you demonstrate so well in the book are, I think the myriad of insidious ways that like cost, both emotional costs and material costs are like just compound and compound and compound like the phone call that like cost this much, whether it's the sending money to the commissary then half of it is sent to pay off a debt from a lawyer who wasn't invested or from the, you know, from this court legal fee this legal fear. So could you talk a little bit about that and the ways that, you know, paying for food or paying for the phone calls or paying for socks or paying for all of these things that are meant to that are meant they're not even luxuries right like these are not these are these they are additions to what the person is experiencing but but they are like far from luxuries and one of the I mean I could we only have so much time because and I'm rambling but one of the things to that your brother talks about is just he's hungry. I'm hungry. And when I've been teaching in prisons for six or seven years now and like that is the thing that comes up so often that that I think people on the outside don't fully appreciate they're like they give, they don't give us enough food. I see a people who feel hungry all the time. And so commissary is the way and getting food through commissary is the way that people can mitigate that. But only so many people have people sending them money and then you can only do so much with that money. So all that's to say, could you talk a little bit more about the cost embedded within within the prison, even if prison itself, you know is not quote unquote private. You know this is a profound question. And the public private presumed dichotomy, which is artificial. The line is not clear. It's much more poison. If we think about, you know, private contracts and in in almost every prison, but also if we think about the outsourcing and the privatizing of the rehabilitative effort itself. It's not possible to care for people to make sure that they reintegrate fully into society after their prison. It's the family. So the offloading from from the government in this case on to the family that that's a kind of privatization. I think we don't think enough about. But the, the heart of this thing, even getting to this question of cost the heart of this thing is, is the second artificial break, which is an artificial break between the formal and the informal. And so, and so the formal criminal justice system. What does it do it houses people cages people. It provides them with three hearts and a cop will be the slain that that corrections staff might throw around or something like that. But, but they're not the only ones bearing even the cost of the incarceration the prisoner gets the bill in many states for their time on the inside, but who's going to pay that bill that guys. Once he gets out, locked out of the labor market who's done who's going to cover that bill. The families are going to cover that bill. They don't feed them enough to satiate hunger for a grown, you know, person who's going to cover that. Well, the brother, in this case, in this story gets to every quarter supplement the $50 which is the only amount that they won't dig into that I'm able to to supplement the $50 that the system won't take with with a program that they call Michigan packages so they know that the prisoner doesn't get enough so every quarter they say you break this this these rules and you can you can send some additional money only through this private industry who that that will allow you to buy ramen noodles so not socks they have to buy that through the commissary, not boots they have to buy it through the commissary, not a radio, but they can buy a calendar, and you can get additional $85. So who bears the brunt of feeding clothing housing. There's a relationship between the formal actor, the government, and the informal actor, the family, and every juncture of criminal justice engagement. I don't know if this is a good way to to think about this that we're implicated we're drawn into it well that's on the inside now go on the outside. On the inside the cost is born by family and friends and then there's the emotional cost the cost of the loss the cost of, you know what does it mean to be a boy or a girl growing up. There's some real beauty I'd see in those visiting rooms there's some real beauty I'd see over the phone there's some real beauty I'd see and feel from the families that I follow when that little girl that little boy would know some man somewhere even if they're in a cage loves me. She's less beautiful through that cave through those bars they that man that woman, she still loves me that that that's incredible and I would see that and, and wrestling with that those be the things that that sort of that helped me write this book that that strength, the reservoir of strength that these families would bring to bear these black families that we say are are unstructured, disorganized weak bring to bear that was some beauty there. They wrestle with that cost they overcame it and they supplement it with a kind of emotional force that they brought to bear on this situation that that that would feel impossible. If we if we laid it out. You know plainly without the context if we didn't know so many men and women go through this. But when they get out. They're locked out of the they can't get a job. They certainly can't get a living wage job they have to pass a good character clause you know, I'm thinking about Reginald the way in bets experiences that were chronicled in you know the New York Times and sources. He's gone on to get a law degree, you know, you know the famous headline, you know, let this ex convict have, you know, past the bar or something like that. There's a panel there's a conversation, you know, are you are you are you exceptional enough for us to allow you to have the thing your test score says you should have. For a rental application, the kinds of costs that get born in that family system they have to figure out not only how to pull together the money to help this person stabilize and get an application, but they have to pull together a set of references that will convince the landlord to rent an apartment to somebody who's got a credit score that will qualify them and baby has finally gotten the job. How many coaches to sleep on to seek to find sustainable employment has finally gotten the job. Now they need a set of references they got to do a dance they got to go cap and hand and prove to the landlord. I was lost now I'm found I was blind now I see please rent me an apartment. These are these are the costs that are born by this entire network, not just the individual, you know, but the entire the entire network, the entire community, but it's not just born and the reason why your initial question was very important is, is because a family life for for half of the country, because half of the country has had a loved one who's gone to an American jail or prison means a transformed country means the country operates in a way that it wouldn't normally operate. What would life be like if we didn't have this hanging over our social relationships. And I think I think we could make something much more beautiful. Yeah, I just have I have a one leave time for the audience to ask Q&A. So if folks have have questions please put them in the Q&A box. And we'll try to get to them. My last thing, you know, you wrote, honestly, one of the bank sometimes you read a book, and then you're like, dang, I should have done this like that. My book comes out in June and we have and for those who don't know Ruben and I have the same editor, who's this, you know, Vanessa mobile is brilliant. Fantastic. We're very lucky. But I read Ruben's sort of method section that you're about this about this project basically. I was like, damn, this is much more beautiful than mine. I was like Baldwin's here. We got like proximity. I was like, Oh, no, I got is it too late about the email Vanessa. Can we switch it? Is it at the printer yet? But it honestly is a beautiful, beautiful method section. And what did you say you're thinking about proximity right because because obviously the nature of what makes this story different. And a quote unquote traditional sociological text is your own proximity to the story, right, both as someone who grew up in a poor black segregated neighborhood, and as somebody whose father was in prison and his brother was in prison and grew up surrounded by the multiple neighborhoods of the carceral state. And you think very take very seriously proximity as a method, right and you say a sociology of being together takes proximity as a method and an analysis, because to the careful social scientists, proximity is a gift. Could you talk just briefly before we hop into Q&A about how your own proximity to the story shaped the way that you that you wrote it. Yeah, I think they're real strengths in in social scientists and journalists and storytellers generally trying to be objective and taking critical distance. And I think there's a strength there I think it tells us some things. But the things that it can't tell us, because the writer doesn't allow themselves close enough to see how things get revealed on the ground as it were so so I can spend six years doing field work and and and and and being close to people eating and spending time with them being together. But then I go to write, and when I go to write, I distance myself from my subject emotionally because I'm taught to, and myself from from the, the things that I learned even being together during that time because I make some claim about what it is that I see, and it's very important to do that so people take you seriously, but when I do that, when I distance myself from my emotional connection, my political participation, my social position together with these folks. I miss what it's like to be together. So I'll start paying attention to bright and shiny objects. Like, and I think people need to study the prisons, but we've studied the 2.3 million people who are located in a prison. And we haven't spent any time at all with the 80 million people who have a criminal record in this country. And what that means. And so until I miss what it means to live with a record, because I'll be paying attention to what it means to have at one point been in prison, I might even study housing. And I might say, how many people have been unable to get housing and let me chronicle your inability to get your housing. And I might miss what it's like to be in relationship with someone who can find an apartment or how they relate with their grandmother, or how they relate with me even because I've written myself out of the story. So what I try to do is is is is I try to allow myself closeness to both what I feel what I'm experiencing. What my pain is and the feelings of the people that I'm following I try to allow myself closeness to my own pains, though they're different. So my pains are going to be different from my brother's pains and not the same. This isn't about empathy say, but I try to allow myself closeness to my own pain. So I can understand something about my brother's pain and the pains of the people who I follow being close allows me to see things that distance doesn't let me see. I take this closeness as as as a method and I try to write up what that is in the appendix of the book, which I really appreciate you bringing it up it's called the gift of proximity. I hope that it's, it's useful. And I tried to write that not as a methods appendix because I didn't want people to, you know, fall asleep. Definitely. I mean I think about my own reversal Gonzalez taught me taught my methods course in graduate school. And we read all of these different methods sections, which is like, you know, such as sociology sociology, you know grad student thing to do, but but I think what you've done is so. It's so beautiful because you wrote it in ways that I think are will be will make it part of the curriculum of all of these methods qualitative methods classes throughout sociology schools throughout the country I hope. Also, just for someone who is interested in how you were thinking about the construction of this project just provide so much rich insight so I'm very grateful to you for that so we're going to hop in answers many questions as we can. I have a question from Hannah, can you speak to the impact incarceration has on incarcerated persons family and loved ones ability to participate in the communities they exist in. I know of some research from Ariel white on the disenfranchising impact of incarceration on family on families of those in jail and prison but I wonder about about what that distance. I wonder about that my distance friend family members from how that my distance family members from the community so you spoke about that briefly but maybe about the family members ability to participate in the communities as they exist which which is fascinating because how does, if you are the person letting somebody sleep on your couch, but you have to move through the community differently. Right, like you got to make different decisions about how, like, you know, who you let into the house, who you let who you tell, who do you trust to tell you that that person is there. Do you let when do you let them out of the house what does it mean people see that person coming and going knowing what is it. So that is fascinating that's a great question and I'm curious what you think. Yeah, no, I think I think I think that precisely that that your freedom to your freedom of movement is restricted, you know it's interesting one of the people who are followed by you know when when when when you go to prison it's not just you in prison there, they're there with you, you know, is what he said, and so is that there's also the weight of not being able to care for your loved one in the way that you want to there's a lot of interesting work on the effects the mental health effects of it of, of, of say over policing and incarceration on for example, other so that their children are incarcerated and they that these mental health effects that get one that I don't think get enough attention in the public discourse. And then finally, there's questions of civic participation well how civically active can you be how active in your community can you be if you're sending all your disposable income and lots and spending lots and lots of your time trying to care for someone who's locked in a cage. So, so there's the fiscal impact of that in the family. There's the, there's the emotional impact. There's the psychological impact, and then there's the logistical the time the impact on the time that that this woman has probably keeping a job, probably raising some children. This this this cousin this man this brother this this uncle has doing the same kinds of things. Thank you for that question Hannah. Here's a question from new America's own Henry slaughter. I'm very struck by Ruben's point that although African Americans are vastly overrepresented in prison populations relative to their percentage of the US population. There are still 1 million white Americans in prison, a huge number. Is there a way of making a common cause in a way that helps to counter the stereotypes of blackness equaling criminality, and increase the political power of the movement, overall. So, I'm not aware of a white prisoner movement per se but I am aware of prisoners, banning together as a class of people and pushing against the laws and policies that him the men. Another example of this is an organization that's in New York just leadership USA as a national coalition of formerly incarcerated activists who worked together to do a few things so all of them are already activists. And so what just leadership USA tries to do is to build the capacity of these activists to do their work in a more impactful way. This is very there run. The leadership is, is, is, is, is formerly incarcerated, formerly incarcerated people the board members, many of them not all of them because you need people with, you know, I mean not that no one who formerly incarcerated has deep pockets but you know you need deep pockets you need people from foundations you need people from rich families, you know you need all these sort of things, but board members are also formerly incarcerated people who who've made a name for themselves this isn't to say that the model is perfect. But this is a that this is a group of people who are who are who are banding together around the idea of having a criminal record I'm thinking about all of us and none in California I'm thinking about the kinds of organizations that you know the, the President Burton in California participates in the formerly incarcerated people in families network that gets together every year so these, these coalitions the formerly incarcerated people who come together and form, form around the just cause of addressing the impacts of on people like them, but they also address other things it's really striking to follow these activists out in fact part of my work follows activists across the country. To understand what's happening, but they're not just involved in questions of criminal justice reform they're really involved in the work of trying to make the world a much better place so that they're doing services they're doing anti poverty work they're being arrested and participate in things like the more Monday events you know these kinds of things. They're doing anti violence work that they're deeply involved the last place that you see this group being called for. But nothing being done in response meaning we don't reward them beyond the paycheck for their work doing good is the whole movement across credible messengers and violence prevention. And where the cache is for you to have say been convicted of a gun crime or something like that. And what they expect you to do is put your body on the line go and interrupt the fight, or, or, or just talk to these kids who are picking up guns to help them put the guns down. And this is powerful and beautiful and important work. And they're different kinds of studies about their effectiveness and this sort of thing that's not really the point for me the main point for me is that once these men and women across the country who've been involved in violence, put their gun down and then try to reclaim the streets try to change the street so that kids don't go through the things they go through. What do they get at the end of it beyond the check they still they still can't read an apartment they still don't have a place to stay and this is something that we have to fix, we have to fix our limit to them. Several people have asked specifically about what it was like to write this book having an incarcerated family member and people who themselves have had incarcerated family members are thinking about how you told the line of advocating for your brother without any questions about his experience or or centering yourself and your own perspectives in that so so that's one part. And then the other part comes from our fellow New America fellow Sarah Jackson, a brilliant academic herself, who says as a fellow black academic with the experience of having an incarcerated family member. I'm interested in your decision to reveal at all this part of your family of yourself and of your family. What kind of professional pressures and questions did you grapple with in the decision to reveal your personal experiences alongside the families you follow. Thank you for these questions. I'll say, writing the book wasn't always easy but the experience helped me quite a bit. I tried to do I tried my best to get in touch with how I felt and how I experienced the thing and use that to drive the kinds of questions that I would then ask the people who I was following. So I try my best to remember my pain and the source of that pain. Okay, you know, what does it mean to send these ramen noodles so so so now when I'm when I'm talking to somebody, I can talk to them about the visit specific things about the visit I can use that to this is going to sound crass but to my advantage, as far as understanding the situation and helping other people to walk me through it the second thing that did to make sure that I wasn't while I'm present in the study, and I'm present in the study because I should be in the study because I was born poor and black after 1972. And if if statistics are right, unless everybody's wrong, then then I'll be impacted by I would have been in my own study had I not known myself. So it's so it's so it's so what I tried to do is is is check back in with the people who I was following you know in social science we call this member checking you know I would talk to them and sometimes I get things wrong. But tell me you know there's a there's a point in the in the book where I'm where I'm trying to understand a history of trauma that that that one of the brothers who I follow is experiencing and I presume that it came from. You know one member of the family is father and he corrected me know that wasn't the case what happened was this and he and he walked me through and that's how I that's how I wrote the chapter, or that section of the chapter, his corrections. And in fact his corrections told me something important they told me, because this is someone who I've known for many years and who I've grown close to and it's like okay I'm making presumptions. That's part one and I need to check those presenters part to their things I would have never asked if this was a kind of hit and quit sort of study, because it was over the long term because I had access to people because I could ask them about the because I could present my experiences to them and reflect back their experiences as I experienced them. It provided an opportunity for me to get things right that I may have ordinarily got wrong. The decision to reveal my own experiences in this book in the institutional process that came with it. I tried to do a couple things I tried to write. I revealed this stuff because if I was being honest. When I wrote. I would have been in the model this point that I raised earlier. And I think there's an active dishonesty that not that people not not not sharing is not dishonest but I'm saying like, there's this distance that that that we're taught to assume that hides things that that we will that would ordinarily that would go to us if we if we allow ourselves to be close to it. And so, so I decided, I'm going to take this risk. The risk is worth it. As far as the kinds of professional risks. I'm glad to have benefited from supportive colleagues who who while they maybe at first didn't understand what I was doing. I started seeing close to finished works and realized that I wasn't losing any of the theoretical heft that that the the the rigor that I brought to the studies that the book consists of basically three studies which makes it sound. That kind of was not trying to say that but to the studies that that that comprise the book that I brought to the stage to comprise the book myself. So until they saw that thankfully I see this as a kind of innovation. And I'm grateful for that. Just a few minutes left because we want to honor everybody's time but this is your reminder to go to bookshop.org slash shop slash solid state in order your copy right now I already have a copy. I'm going to order another copy. I would just like really support this book support Ruben or Dr Miller if you wanted students. I don't know what they call you, Dr. Dr Ruben, Dr Ruben, Dr Ruben Miller. But we'll try to get two more in a question from audience something I found very powerful hearing you talk about your work is how the gross expansion and overreach of the punishment apparatus takes a toll on our collective moral consciousness. You said earlier quote, you can't do that to me and not think that it affects you as someone who's been doing this work for decades. How have you seen that collective ethical failure affect us politically, socially, and then how we talk about and think about what punishment and accountability are. You know, it's, thank you for that question. It's a powerful one. This was Dr King's observation in, in, in, in the, in, in the famous, you know, Selma speech where he talks about feeding the, you know, poor white people Jim Crow, you know he calls it the last racism as the last outpost of psychological oblivion. You know, this is, this is, this is Du Bois's observation about by, by, by, by talking about slaves as workers in black reconstruction. This, this, this, this, this, this observation comes from a long history of, of, of scholars who are concerned with these kinds of questions and more. The, the, the place that we see it, we can see failure in the criminal justice system itself are refusal to address violence in any meaningful way and, and, and, and refusing to address violence in a meaningful way. Our communities get no less violent so while we've seen a quote great crime decline which is absolutely the case crime rates violence rates of violence have dropped precipitously in the last 40 or 50 years is absolutely the case we see a situation of violence in, in some neighborhoods and those neighborhoods look a certain way low home ownership residential segregation, poor, etc. And it looks the same in poor black neighborhoods as it does in poor white neighborhoods we learned this from Lori Crevo and Ruth Peterson's excellent studies starting in somewhere around 1999 that told us when you control for residential immigration for home ownership for poverty for education that white homicide rates equal black homicide rates this this is so striking that we've done almost nothing in, in, in poor rural communities around these questions because we presumed blackness and criminality are the same thing. So what we've done is we failed to care for poor whites, you know, etc. So that's just one example I could, I could, I could give you more but I should, I should be mindful of the time. Yeah, we're going to do, we're going to do this thing where we asked mass three questions together. I'm going to ask you to answer them. I think this will be our last, our last go around. And we should also know that everybody's very high for you. They're like, that's my man, shout out to Ruben, he's out here killing a game, your community is here and just so so proud. If you haven't read, he just had an excellent review in the New York Times, which like people need to know like getting a review in the times at all is hard to get much less getting one where they're like this powerful important book. I mean, game changer game changer. You got to answer these questions because they're talking to me and read on the dock. They're in bold and read they're like wrap it up Clint. So has your brother read the book. And also, and how has your brother read the book and what does he think. And what are the last question. And as you begin talking about the book more broadly with the general public. Do you find, do you find that they're unaware of a lot of these issues or do you think that your was your goal to make people aware of something they want to wear before or to just frame the literature in a different sort of way. I think. So the last question, both I think people are unaware of the extent the reach of of of of our car civil system that I don't think people are aware of how it affects the American family, how it filters into the American Democratic I think when we think about democracy and civic engagement we think about voting and that is but one part perhaps the perhaps not even the most important aspect of civic engagement I mean certainly a very important aspect I don't want to say don't voting is very important but it's just one part. Another kind of bright shiny object thing but but there are many ways that people are civically engaged or not. And in this group. I don't think we're aware of the degree to which that happens at the same time, we also needed to reframe how we thought about things to kind of get our mind to to want to honor and address what it means to be in prisons jail solitary confinement drug to war on drugs all stuff is very important. But to make space for more expansive discussion of what punishment does by paying attention to it inside and also outside of the system of punishment. That's part one. My brother has read parts of the book you know and and and he's in he's talked to me he tells me he's very proud of me. I don't know if that means he likes it or he's very but he says Ruben school but if anybody gets something out of this shit I'm glad for him like. That's what he says. Word word well thank you so much Ruben. This has been a week of talk for for hours and hopefully will be sitting around a dinner table again together in the after times. But we're going to send it back to we still to finish us up again by the book. Go buy it now don't say I'm going to do it later. Don't put it in your tabs. We all got too many tabs open do it now support Ruben and this incredible incredible incredible book. I can't wait to see how it impacts the world. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.